yeah, I really like a nice interface too, I mean I really gotta have a touchscreen, but it's not always the easiest way to use the PC while driving...

I've used everything from touch pads to trackballs & little eraser style mice through the years, my current minivan has a shuttle, which is cool combined with a trackball & the alpine remote.... I hate having more than one control though & it may not look as good as I would like, but I have total control of my whole system at my fingertips comfortably which is a necessity, well to me anyway

now I'm doing another car & I've come up with a new plan for it... I'm going to merge the haptic control & the space navigator into one device that's all controlled with one knob, then put a few buttons around it..., this time I want a control that looks as nice as it works

I won't be using all the axis' from the space navigator, the navigator is a sweet piece for 3d work, but stand alone in the car it leaves a little to be desired... there is no tactical feedback at all, & because of this it is impossible to activate one axis without affecting another, for example it is not possible to use the up or down axis for much of anything cause you can't press up or down without also moving it left/right/up or down... it's a nice piece though & has a lot of potential..., I got a design with these 2 merged that will be really sweet

for your radio, if you took really tiny wire, like the kind of wire in a scssi cable or even an lvds cable, you should be able to fit that in between the face & the board I think..., worse case a single insulated strand would work.. they would only have to go a few inches till they could brake out to a board that attaches larger wires for your connections outside the radio...

Ya the touch screen is not the easy to use when bouncing down the road. I think the touch screen is more of a cool factor then useful. Or cousre I don't have a sunlight readable one so its almsot uselsess during the day. I have steering wheel controls but just VOl up/down track up/down, mode and mute. I could use the basic functions with that but I need a little more too.

Glad to here your take Turbo on the space navigator. We really do need to steal ideas from OEM, because they spend tons of money of R&D to find the safest and most ergonimc ways to interface the radio. Will your thing you are working on look like Zorros CCstick?

I would almsot need something super flat like ribbon cable, the kind on thin plastic sheets. Is that what you meant by the LVDS cable? The wires from the parallel cable were pretty damn small, and I still didn't have room for those. I took a dremel to one button to make room, but I decided against that for now.

When I have a whoel day, my buddy and I are going to rip it apart again and hopefully figure out a way to get wires to each button. Maybe I just need bigger tactile buttons to allow me some space to fit wires. I dunno.

there are wires that are as tiny as a strand of hair, there has to be a solution for yours..

& yeah, I agree, the oem's do spend tons on R&D for interface, which is kinda why my idea is going to be pretty much the same fuctionality as the new s-class... I had one of them in my shop & it was really impresive... one thing that really impressed me was the variable dial that varied with the display like the haptic thing... when I saw that it was the first thing that popped into my head, cool, now I can build a control like the benz.... up until then I've been looking for a benz console to hack, but there impossible to find & would have been way more backwards engineering & phidgets & other funky mods...

the control I'll build will use the actual knob from a benz, & I want it to move & feel like the benz.... the navigator kinda swings through an arc as it travels side to side... meaning when it's pushed all the way left it's actually tilted towards the left & the left side is down while the right side is up... I don't want that, I want the knob to stay at exactly 90deg vertical through it's travel... sorry to spit this here, when I get started with the control I'm building I'll start a thread for it

No problem if you post comments here unrelated to my install. I think you have a good idea and I'll keep a look out for it. I haven't ever played with the benz control so I have to rely on you. I knwo you can come up with something cool.

I know there is wire that thin but for me to use it hahaha. No way. I worked in a place where they had Asian women soldering wires as thin as hair to components underneath a microscope. Asian women were the only ones that had enough patience and a steady hand to do such work according to my boss. I think he was right.

Anyway, I should have taken more pictures of the panel when I had it apart. I haven't given up yet. I'm just not too keen on hacking something up unless I know it can be returned to stock without a lot of time or money. I don't mind cutting/drilling/hacking once I have determined there is no other way.

Option1:
I plan on testing the circuit board to see if I can locate solder points on the backside.

Option 2:
Whip out my dremel and start making some room by cutting away excess plastic that is not needed.

Option 3:
Find some tactile switches that have a longer shaft.

Option 4:
Find a way to easily extend the shaft of the button or switch.

Basically without a ton of pictures, the above pictures shows in Green what I ground out. I also had to shave some of the white led difusers/track button holders just a tad to allow the wires to fit. After many test fits, looking to see wher ethe wires were routed, and hot glue, it finally went back together.

So now to do some testing to see if there are any votlages present on the wires going to the buttons. I need to determine if I can wire this directly up to a controller or a hacked up keypad without causing electrical damage to the face panel. THere is a microcontroller on the button circuit board, so it is possible that I could let the smok out of something. I am going to avoid that.

Also note that I wired the end of a parallel cable so I can disconnect it fairly easily in case I need to work on something.

What kind of voltage did you get when you tested the output? Do you have any detailed pics of the soundcard? My experience w/ changing the op-amps has yeilded more detailed highs, and mids, but that won't change the output voltage. If you have detailed pics of the card maybe a simple resistor change will open it up.

I haven't played with the card since after I installed it almost 2 months ago. I'll have to take some pictures of the card for you, but I already knew the opamps won't change the voltage, only how it sounds. I did a whole review on the card in the reviews section here if you wanted to check it out. After seeing the DAC thread you posted in I was thinking the same thing about possibly increasing the output voltage the same way (I was getting under 0.5V when I measured). I wasn't really that concerned about output voltage but it would sure help reduce the possiblity of noise.

Nope but the resistor values used in conjunction with the opamps and the voltage supply rails will help determine output. It would be interesting to alter this, but after I pulled the card out of my PC what I though makes it more difficult...not impossible...just difficult. The resistors are SMD.